July 2, 2010

‘The thinking goes that if you watch the glittering world you’ll feel like a part of it, even though you aren’t of course, you’re just a pleb gawping at a box.’ – Charlie Brooker

There’s something about American TV which just follows the same formula constantly, usually portraying the wealthy and beautiful, with barely a glimpse of anybody vaguely normal looking.

Enter gruesome shitfest Californication, an American drama following the truly terrible life of Hank Moody (played by David Duchovny), a Bukowski-esque writer and womaniser.

Here is where we find the main problem with the show. It’s impossible to feel sympathy for Hank whenever anything bad happens to him, as the majority of his life consists of being a rich, unlovable prick who has sex with many attractive women.

It’s an increasingly common problem on English TV that American drivel is being pumped directly at us, Californication being a more recent example, and the current figurehead of aspirational TV.

Aspirational TV, the ultimate ‘Fuck you’ injected into the eyes of mainstream public. Portraying those with blessed lives is a great way of distracting us peasants from our dreary lives of work, rain, and not living in California having sex with nubile young women.

It can be easily compared to the girl-focussed arsepile ‘Sex and the City’, only the focus is on fake tits and booze, not latex dicks and shoes. Both centre around writers and their nauseating, unpleasant friends, and seem to assume that everybody will sympathise with the problems depicted, despite most of the issues addressed having all the inconvenience of having to buy Pepsi instead of Coca Cola.

Californication then: A great script ruined by the fact that everybody within the show is a dislikeable bellend.